spair. From this distance
of years I pity him. Then I considered him unnecessarily concerned about
me--"a fussy old hen," as one of the boys suggested. The invitation from
Jack Dale, a distant cousin, to spend a summer with him on his ranch in
South Alberta came in the nick of time. I was wild to go. My guardian
hesitated long; but no other solution of the problem of my disposal
offering, he finally agreed that I could not well get into more trouble
by going than by staying. Hence it was that, in the early summer of
one of the eighties, I found myself attached to a Hudson's Bay Company
freight train, making our way from a little railway town in Montana
towards the Canadian boundary. Our train consisted of six wagons
and fourteen yoke of oxen, with three cayuses, in charge of a French
half-breed and his son, a lad of about sixteen. We made slow enough
progress, but every hour of the long day, from the dim, gray, misty
light of dawn to the soft glow of shadowy evening, was full of new
delights to me. On the evening of the third day we reached the Line
Stopping Place, where Jack Dale met us. I remember well how my heart
beat with admiration of the easy grace with which he sailed down upon
us in the loose-jointed cowboy style, swinging his own bronco and the
little cayuse he was leading for me into the circle of the wagons,
careless of ropes and freight and other impedimenta. He flung himself
off before his bronco had come to a stop, and gave me a grip that made
me sure of my welcome. It was years since he had seen a man from home,
and the eager joy in his eyes told of long days and nights of lonely
yearning for the old days and the old faces. I came to understand this
better after my two years' stay among these hills that have a strange
power on some days to waken in a man longings that make his heart grow
sick. When supper was over we gathered about the little fire, while Jack
and the half-breed smoked and talked. I lay on my back looking up at the
pale, steady stars in the deep blue of the cloudless sky, and listened
in fullness of contented delight to the chat between Jack and the
driver. Now and then I asked a question, but not too often. It is
a listening silence that draws tales from a western man, not vexing
questions. This much I had learned already from my three days' travel.
So I lay and listened, and the tales of that night are mingled with the
warm evening lights and the pale stars and the thoughts of home that